Blog
Friday February 8, 2008
39 games - one step to oblivion
So. They’ve finally done it. The Premiership chairmen have come up with an idea so mad, so avaricious, so crushingly short-sighted, as to make the comic pronouncements of Fifa president Sepp Blatter seem benign by comparison.
I mean, Blatter drives you mad, but entertainingly so. His idea to have women footballers dress a bit more skimpily to lure the punters in? Funny. His edict saying injured footballers must leave the pitch and come back on again if they get hurt, thus giving the hard cases even more incentive to kick them out of the game? Amusing, if like me you’re more of the hacker persuasion than the silkily skilled. The “Van Nistelrooy rule”, allowing strikers to score goals even when they’re standing two miles offside? Hilarious, especially when you hear the losing manager whinging about it after the game.
But the idea that Premiership teams should play a single extra game in the season, abroad, against randomly selected opposition, with points to be added to those gleaned from the existing 38 games?
Not funny at all. Not close.
It’s the beginning of the end of league football, which is the foundation on which the game’s success has been built.
They used to say “the league table doesn’t lie”. Under this system, it will.
The 39th game kills the point of the Premiership. I for one will not attend any Premiership matches under such a system. What’s the point? The three points you get in the game you’re watching might be wiped out, when you draw Manchester Utd in Rio while your rivals get Crystal Palace.
There are, of course, two possible explanations for this scheme. One is that the Premiership chairmen are trying to shock us with the maddest idea they can come up with, so fans keep their mouths shut when they come up with something only slightly less crazy, like a world super-league that lasts all season long.
The second is that they really mean it.
Either way it’s got to be fought.
Friday February 1, 2008
Speed-dating, by train, in German
Struggling to find a partner this Valentine’s Day? Struggle no more, because according to a press release that has just landed in my inbox, those enterprising folk over at Deutsche Bahn are giving you the chance to find love on the rails. They’ve launched the Flirt Express – a speed-dating event which will be taking place concurrently in 15 German cities including Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg. Guess you’ll have to speak German, though, or you may find your romantic prospects somewhat limited.
Of course I thought this was terribly new and exciting, but just to check, the first thing I did was google “speed-dating train”, and discovered … blimey. First Great Western, of all people, came up with the scheme 18 months ago. Who’d have thought it?
Nevertheless, “speed dating by train among the Germans” sounds like a good first-person travel/love feature for some journalist or other – though for about 1,000 very good reasons, not me.
Thursday December 13, 2007
Marketing bit
Everyone needs to shout about themselves sometimes – especially at Christmas – so I’ve just uploaded a section on my site setting out 10 reasons to commission Chris Alden. Do take a look.
Wednesday December 12, 2007
The tiredness of the long-distance runner
Many people who know me as a journalist are surprised when they hear I’m also a bit of a runner. It’s not something I did much in my 20s, but when I was in my teens I ran the London Marathon in four hours or so – and now I’ve decided I miss that sense of enjoying something that isn’t related to food or booze. So over the past few months I’ve bought some running shoes and headed back out to pound the streets.
On the plus side, I’ve run a 10K (in 44:14 – woo!) and I’m now training for a 10-mile race. Broadly I feel lighter and fitter and able to drink beer and eat cheese guilt-free.
On the minus side, I’m not 18 any more, which presents the following problems:
• The first thing I feel in the morning is pain, and a crushing desire to go back to sleep. I can only describe it as like having a hangover in the bottom half of your body – not a description I’ve seen in Runner’s World magazine, which seems to be written for people who never have hangovers in their lives.
Happily, being a freelance, I usually respond by closing my eyes.
• When I stand up in the morning, my ankles make a clicking noise. I click all the way to the bathroom and click all the way back. My girlfriend thinks I am an alien.
• The chafing. It chafes there, and there, and sometimes even there. Yes, there. This never happened when I was 18. I therefore have a pot of lubricating stuff in the bathroom for the first time in my life.
But all the pain is worth it when you’re running in the driving rain along empty streets – everyone else may be festering on the sofa watching Clarkson, but you’re putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the weather in your face, and feeling good for another few miles. It’s what we were built for, and it makes me feel alive.
Tuesday September 25, 2007
Welcome to the new portfolio
After weeks of hard work and countless late nights, I’ve finally launched my new online portfolio – this website.
Thanks to the guys at the open-source CMS Textpattern – without whom this site and countless others wouldn’t be possible.
Monday September 17, 2007
Smiley bins
These recycle bins in Moustières, Provence, made me smile. And want to recycle.
Wednesday April 11, 2007
Bloody goat
From Ill Met by Moonlight, the famous tale of the kidnapping of a German general in Crete during world war two, is this character of a local rebel:
In the company was [a man] who said that he had been turned out of his house in Chania and had come to stay in this village with relatives. Once upon a time, he continued, he had spent four years as a waiter in a Los Angeles restaurant. Nor was there reason to disbelieve this last statement, for his conversation was liberally punctuated by two well-worn Americanisms. Everything was “hot dog” – except the War, the Germans, the Communists, and the goat which was for ever trotting in and making a mess on the fireplace – and these latter all went under the single heading of “Goddam sonofabitch”.
Go on, say it in a Greek accent.
All content © Chris Alden. Original design by Andy Brockie, adapted by Chris Alden over the years.